Potatoes are good for your heart

MOSES LAKE — Back in 2010, Chris Voigt wanted to prove just how healthy a diet of potatoes was.

“I ate only potatoes for 60 days to prove that they were so healthy you could literally live off them if you had to,” said the executive director of the Washington State Potato Commission.

What Voigt was doing wasn’t new. Potatoes have been central to the human diet for thousands of years, beginning with the Andean peoples who originally domesticated and cultivated the plant in South America, and then by Europeans after the Spanish Conquest of the Americas in the 16th century.

In fact, by the 19th century, the widespread cultivation in potatoes in Europe probably banished famine from the continent, and gave its many people the first real food security they’d ever experienced.

Of course, Voigt’s problem is more of a modern one. Not a lack of food, but too much of it, with too much fat, too much salt, and not enough of the right kinds of nutrients. And the effects that has on health.

“What I didn’t know at the start of my diet what eating only potatoes would do for my heart health,” Voigt said. “My doctor and I were shocked when we saw how great my blood pressure was, how my cholesterol dropped by 67 points and how my triglycerides, which are kind of like the fat content of your blood, dropped by 50 percent.”

“It was the potato that helped me get back to health again,” Voigt said.

Potatoes are high is potassium, Voigt said, often used as a salt substitute and “the antidote for diets high in sodium.”

A typical potato contains about 160 calories — a small portion of a recommended 2,000 calorie-per-day diet — and nearly 900 milligrams of potassium, or 25 percent of what the body needs each day.

“Most Americans eat too much sodium and don’t get enough potassium. Potassium can help lower blood pressure and improve heart health,” Voigt said. “A potato has more potassium than a banana.”

The Potato Conference will have a blood mobile on site Tuesday, Jan. 24, to allow attendees to donate a pint of blood “to honor the heart healthy effect of the potato,” Voigt said. Anyone who donates will get a free cholesterol and blood pressure test.

“A friend of mine has a boy who needed over 12 pints of blood. He wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for the average, everyday people who take an hour of their time to donate,” Voigt said. “I encourage everyone to step forward and make a donation.”

Charles H. Featherstone can be reached via email at countygvt@columbiabasinherald.com